


Holy, Unholy

by Bhelryss



Series: AU: Zombies [3]
Category: Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones
Genre: Dozla - Freeform, Gen, L'Arachel & Dozla - Freeform, Mansel & L'Arachel, Mansel - Freeform, one OC, rennac gets mentioned less than a horse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-15
Updated: 2018-10-14
Packaged: 2019-08-02 09:17:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16302395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bhelryss/pseuds/Bhelryss
Summary: L'Arachel lives in a nation afflicted by, for lack of a better word, zombies.She wants to Purify them.





	1. Chapter 1

L’Arachel is four years old. Her mommy smells like leather oils, metal, and the weird sharpness of light magic. The sharpness of light magic is her  _ favorite _ smell. It makes her the whole house smell clean, and safe. (Kind of like how her daddy smells of leather oils, sweat, and blood. Her father is not  _ magic _ , but he is devoted, and determined, and L’Arachel loves him. He makes her feel safe too.)

(But before he comes home, he wipes off the worst of the smells he picks up “at work.” The smell of death, and gore, and the putrid things that stick to armor, the things he won’t bring home. L’Arachel’s mother doesn’t need to wipe away the smells of the job, she purifies from horseback, and her knights, and her husband, keep things at a distance from her.)

The home is bright because the window curtains are always pulled away from window to let in the sun. L’Arachel likes to play in the sunbeams, with pretty dolls her uncle sends her and the toy sword her father made her, and the little empty diary she pretends is a tome, and make-believe she is alongside her parents. Her parents are heroes, she knows. She even likes to say so. Mommy with her pretty horse and her sharp-magic smell, and Daddy with his clunky armor and his sword, fighting in the name of the saint. 

Daddy comes home and lifts her up and she squeals when he throws her in air for Mommy to catch. She squeals loud and high, laughing big enough to show off all her teeth. All her toys smell a little like leather oils, because she likes to throw her arms around her parents’ necks, and wrap her legs around their chests like they are trees to climb, and her toys get ground into the armor her parents haven’t quite had the time to peel off. 

(Annaire and L’Orcan are incredibly in love, with each other, with their daughter, and with their jobs. Annaire had given up the throne to be her nation’s High Knight-Priestess, a calling that had summoned many of her line. Mansel took the throne in her stead, younger and steadier than the sister he loved, who lived a hero’s life. Excitement and daring and unending energy that was only matched by her husband. They are a good match to each other, and Mansel quietly dotes on his niece.)

L’Arachel is five when her parents ride out to fight in the woods, and don’t come back. She’s old enough to cry, and to scream, and to be angry. But she is a smart girl, and she’s known for a long time that her parents are-were heroes. Sometimes, in the stories, the heroes don’t always come back. (It takes her a long time to be okay with this. It is a sadness she will always carry, but it is always, always secondary to her pride. Her parents were heroes and they  _ lived _ divine glory.)

Mansel moves her from her home (a cabin built by her great-great-great grandfather for his wife, and passed down from parent to child down to L’Orcan and Annaire. The cabin is hers now, or rather held  _ for _ her until she’s old enough to know what to do with it. It’s hers, yes, but she will never live there again.) to his castle. The old castle, where her mother grew up with her brother. Mansel mentions this to her, when she comes, and she is distracted for a time, chasing Mansel’s memories, once she acclimates to the castle. 

She is a bright, thriving reminder of the  _ force _ that had been his elder sister. An inheritor of the drive and passion of both her parents. Mansel grieves, but he is also, unexpectedly, a father. He doesn’t throw her in the air, and he doesn’t smell of oil, blood, or light magic, and for a time L’Arachel is angry at him. But it passes. Time eases the sharpness of the sting that memory will always hold. 

The castle smells different from her home. It’s one of many things that L’Arachel has to process, after her move. The hallways smell like cold, in a way her warm, sunny home had never. The pillows and sheets smell like flowers, the kind that grow in spring and last only a short time. The kind she used to pick, to weave into clumsy crowns for her father. It’s a smell that makes her horribly sad at first, but then later brings her comfort. Her uncle smells like spice, like the deserts her mommy had told her about, far to the south. It’s nice, but she misses the bite of magic in the air.

So when she thinks she’s old enough, (she is a month older than six, and a year into her life at the palace) she dances into Mansel’s study and argues for her training to begin. (For ten minutes Mansel listens to L’Arachel beg to be taught how to sling  _ lightning _ from her fingers, like Annaire had been able to do. For ten minutes L’Arachel refuses to give him a second to reply, only rolling through point after point. It boils down to she wants to, she wants to be like her parents, she wants to be powerful and special and heroic and devout, and she won’t take ‘no’ for an answer.)

So Mansel takes her by the hand, her tiny hand so much smaller than his own, and introduces her to Sister Natalie. The cleric in charge of the Stone’s Shrine looks at L’Arachel’s bright smile and brighter eyes, and sighs at Mansel. But she still reaches out a hand for L’Arachel to take, and pulls her deeper into the shrine to begin the first lesson of many.

(The temple smells like smoke and incense. It smells like old books and the cold dust that tickles L’Arachel’s nose. It smells like the ritual wine, heavy grapes and summer heat. It smells like healing magic, a softer, gentler version of the sharp snap of light magic. It smells like dried flowers and Sister Natalie’s perfume. It never, ever smells like leather oils and metal and blood. This doesn’t make L’Arachel sad. It  _ doesn’t _ .)

And then she is old enough to get into trouble. (A lie, she’s always been able to get into trouble. Age is just a number, and trouble is timeless.) She steals Sister Natalie’s best stave, and takes a sharp knife from dinner, and waltzes into the woods like it invited her to dance. She stands in the shade, in the darkness underneath one of the larger trees, and L’Arachel looks for a heroic opportunity. The opportunity arises in the form of a Revenant, limping in between the trees, sloughing off decaying flesh irregularly. 

L’Arachel bolts forward to confront it, but gags at the stench. A Revenant at the end of its unlife, and all the more pungent for it. The stave has nothing to heal, and the knife smells not at all, so the only thing she can smell is death. Her shout of excitement dies in her throat, as she is forced to double over and cough. The knife in her grip is harmless, the flat of the blade pressed harshly into her lower thigh, the tip hanging over her knee uselessly, as she chokes around the smell. The stave is dropped to the forest floor, and L’Arachel brings one arm up to her nose, as if her sleeve might protect her from the very air.

The undead turns slowly, and foul liquid drips on the leaf litter. L’Arachel’s eyes water, and she’s having trouble breathing through the awful stench, and she has no idea what to do in the face of this human looking  _ thing _ . It makes a noise that is almost entirely swallowed up by its rotting mouth, and L’Arachel squeaks in automatic response. It gurgles back, and moves closer.

She shrieks, and stabs. The knife is lost in the shifting mess of flesh, and L’Arachel’s hand comes back black, sticky goop spread across the back of it and slipping between her fingers. It smells rancid, and when she shakes her hand to dislodge the sludge, it splats on her boots and spreads a stain on her white dress. L’Arachel shrieks, and kicks out at the creature, and when she pulls her leg back the center of the monster comes too. The Revenant falls over, oozes, and twitches, and then finally lies still.

L’Arachel pants, shakes her leg to try to dislodge the monster stuck to her boots, and steps back without taking her eyes off the  _ thing _ . She trips over the dropped stave, and yelps as she goes down. She coughs, wheezes, and rolls over so her knees press into the dirt underneath her and she can push off to a run. Stave in one hand, skirt hem in the other, L’Arachel sprints back to the safety of sunshine and Sister Natalie’s lectures and Uncle Mansel’s spiced robes. 

She laughs as she runs, nose finally free of the stink of the monster (except for what she takes with her), and she laughs until Sister Natalie steals her stave back and raps her across the shoulders with it. “Reckless! Idiotic!” She begins to yell, but then she throws up her hands and stalks away, around a corner, and out of sight. Mansel reappears around the corner at a run, just a little later, robes hiked up so he can use the full length of his stride. 

His hands swallow up her own, and he kneels on the ground and looks at her like she’s a ghost. “L’Arachel,” he says slowly, with a wiggle in his voice she doesn’t quite understand, “Are you okay?” Sludge smears across his palms, and he only wrinkles his nose a little at the smell. He looks at her and L’Arachel feels a little smaller.

“I’m okay, Uncle!” L’Arachel promises, with her biggest, brightest smile. She is okay, she’s fine. She’s more than fine, she’s made her first steps in following her parents’ footsteps. Although, there is one thing she wants to ask, before she tells Mansel all about her adventure. “Uncle, why are the monsters people?” She’d never thought that the monsters could be people, but the one she’d fought today had certainly  _ looked _ like it had been a person at  _ some _ point.

Mansel cups L’Arachel’s face with a grimy, stinking hand. He seems tense, and he breathes out slowly. She watches his eyes, which are still tight. She blinks, he blinks. “Well,” he says slowly. “Some of the church call them the tainted dead. The unclean, those who died the touch of the Demon King on their shoulders, cursed to walk the world.” 

L’Arachel thinks this over.

“That’s dumb!” She practically shouts, volume control forgotten. She squirms away from his hands, and practically howls, “Evil might hold them, but Good could set them free, Uncle!” For a moment she reminds him too much of Annaire. “It is not their fault that the Grip of Evil is so strong on them.” She sticks out her tongue, only to cough. The smell is horrible. “I’m going to free them, Uncle.”

And she pauses, and primly wipes her hands on her dress, leaving dark stains that slowly grow as the sludge soaks into fine threads. It gets the worst of it off her hands, but her skin holds a greyish tint that only soap and scrubbing will wipe away. It doesn’t seem to bother her. “Of course you are,” Mansel sighs, “I believe you.” She jumps and she squeaks, and the excitement fills her body to bursting. “But first,” he says, words cutting across her exuberance, “You have to learn the way your parents fought Evil.”

It’s the best protection he can offer.


	2. Chapter 2

Dozla smells like metal, and leather oils, and sweat. But she knows this, because she’s grown up under his arm. Rennac, when she can get him under her hands for dancing or healing or simply the act of pulling him along by the hand, smells like coin-metal and sweat and hair oils. Rennac, unlike Dozla, always smells a little like he might walk into a social affair. They sleep in tight enough quarters while L’Arachel guides them across the continent, that they’re all well acquainted with how the others smell.

L’Arachel wakes up every morning to greet the sunrise, the fading smell of Jehannan spices on her bedroll reminding her of Uncle and home, and kisses Horse on the nose. Horse is a good steed, a  _ legendary _ steed, a steed that smells like horse, and leather oils. L’Arachel loves her Horse the way she loves Rennac. (She loves Dozla like she loves Uncle.)

She is on a quest. It’s not her Proving-Quest, she’s not ready to be High Knight-Priestess, but it is  _ a _ quest. An important one, L’Arachel thinks.  _ All _ her quests are important, but this one most of all. Rumors have come to the ears of Rausten’s Hounds of Latona speak of an increase in Fell Creatures, more of the Poor, Unclean Dead have been spotted outside the boundaries of Darkling Woods. In other nations, even.

L’Arachel has taken it upon herself to be the one to investigate the rumors. To be the one to spot and defeat the Evil creatures, and to Cleanse the dead. Dozla, her longtime shadow, comes with her. He laughs, and he smiles, and he pulls her out of the fires she tries to combat from inside the flames. (Rennac comes later. She’s not really of sure of exactly when he shows up, she only knows that once he does...well, he’s as indispensable as Horse! A truly valuable member of the team!)

Even with all her healer’s training under her belt, L’Arachel cannot yet scour evil from the earth with a word, a breath, a gesture. But she can bless what remains, when Dozla has created a bubble of safety for her to live and breathe in, untouched by the stinking, rotting corpses’ reaching, hungry hands. So she blesses, she cries prayers to the sun as it rises and falls, and she walks in the aftermath, keenly wishing for the power her mother had had. She heals Dozla’s scratches and hurts, after he has used his axe to turn that wriggling creature of eyes and darkness to a certain kind of jelly, and she wishes for  _ power _ .

She’s reckless with her drive to fulfill her quest, and unlike Horse, Rennac is reluctant to follow her directions. Dozla is there to pluck her out of the fires too hot for her to handle, as he has done for most of her life. He finds just as much joy in the struggle of Good against Evil as she does, and L’Arachel holds no doubt in her mind that when she becomes the High Knight-Priestess of the Hounds of Latona, Dozla will follow.

Power, when she unlocks it, tingles in her fingertips and smells sharp. She laughs, Proud and Glad and her soul vibrating to the frequency of the universe.

She uses this power to immediately smite a mogall from the air. From the start of her laugh to the destruction of the creature of arcane will and dark energy, L’Arachel is cloaked in the sharpness of  _ lightning _ , and she has never felt so fulfilled. Dozla laughs with her, and she wheels Horse around and into a canter. She approaches a group of Revenants, their melting flesh appearing falsely whole until she closes the distance, and leaps off Horse. 

This is everything she’s ever wanted. 

“In the name of Sainted Latona,” L’Arachel invokes, one hand raised to the sky to invite the strength of the gods and the saint to inhabit her body, “See how your servant faces Evil! See her do your work, to bring home the souls of those held in thrall!” The smell of magic grows stronger, like crackling ozone, and L’Arachel takes a firmly rooted stance. “Sainted Latona, Revered Ilvaldi, hear the prayers of one who venerates you!”

The closest Revenant senses the life in her, and shuffles all the closer, as L’Arachel prays, as she steadies herself. It makes a sound like a schlick as it moves, and it is fresher than the one she slew as a child. It does not fall to pieces on top of her, it does not ooze blackened blood. No, it reaches for her with sharp, boney talons. It moans, deep in its rotting throat.

L’Arachel cries to the sun, the sky, the very air, and wills Light to pull together violently, shredding the undead into clean, purified dust.

Another Revenant comes into range. Boney talons swipe at her, mindlessly, driven only by a dark urge to consume light, and life, and the fires of life. Horse stomps on it, with a sickening  _ crunch _ , and leaves it groaning in the dirt, rotted blood visible between the broken bits of flesh, bone fractured and exposed to the light. More come closer, closer, too close, and L’Arachel hears Dozla’s yell as though through water.

There is only the broken body at her feet, and the shuffling bodies in front of her, her prayers and her magical strikes, and Horse. Light answers her calls, piercing through shambling forms and burning them from the inside to free the souls bound to the bones. Dozla breaks into her rhythm of move, pray, strike, and L’Arachel suddenly has more room to breathe. Horse, well trained, no longer needs to strike out at the creatures who come too close. Whirling steel and leather and blood carves out the space, the time L’Arachel needs to call up the magic.

She holds out a hand, power tingling in her fingertips, and takes a deep breath in. She screams as she exhales, and the last of the Revenants floats away on the wind, pure dust. Her dress is clean, no black, stinking ooze mars it. Dozla’s axe has a blackish tinge along the blade, and he has a scratch along his face from a boney talon, but he is otherwise untouched. Rennac...well at some point Rennac had disappeared, so she does not think of him.

L’Arachel laughs, and smells nothing but sharpness. 


End file.
